Dr. Phil: My Kids Are Liberal Barbarians - Can You Help?

Before I get started, let it be known that I still hate the Yankees. Can't they ever just blow a team out? Why do they insist on winning home games in the ninth or extra innings? And don't tell me it's magic. If I paid a bunch of baseball players $191 million, I'd expect them to levitate like that freak David Blain. The better analogy would be to a young Einstein, taking the SATs, but falling asleep for the first three hours, waking up with 1 hour to go, and acing them; the story isn't how they miraculously pull these games out, it is that they are ever behind.

Also, wow - ten comments on the VP debate entry and several private e-mails to the Hatcher. A new record. And look at the civility between Professor Vic and the Incredible Dirigible. Come on guys - the friend of your friend is not necessarily your friend. Take off the gloves or at least put some iron in them! Now, onto the domestic family bliss entry, or is it?

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“Strange.” Brief pause, eyes still fixed, little brain trying desperately to reconcile what he expected to see and what he is looking at, and then “Very strange.” And so went Bill’s assessment of the first picture of his newest sibling, in the fuzzy black and white indiscernible nature of your typical ultrasound picture. Can't really disagree with the little guy. Of course, we all expect to see something different, and as the technician wheels the little magic wand across Mom’s belly, you see a head, a beating little heart going pitter patter 146 times per minute, two arms, two legs, a spine and a torso.

And if you are the mother of three little boys resigned to the fate of having a fourth, you see… “oh my god - there it is, a penis, as plane as day – no hope ever for a girl – 0 for 4 and it’s your damn fault.” Not quite as thick as the legs, but sitting right there between them, and about half as long. I, on the other hand, with a rudimentary knowledge of statistics and genetics, and a more complete knowledge of my endowments, know right away I am looking at an umbilical cord. There is still hope for a girl.

But my bigger hopes are for something you can’t see on an ultrasound, and might not know for a long time. It’s not as simple as gender – I am talking ideology. And I am as scared of getting a fourth little Kerry supporter as my wife is of getting a fourth boy, because already my three boys are showing signs of being little fascist anarchist commie hipsters.

It’s October, 2004, one month prior to the presidential elections, and the boys have shown their first signs of rebellion against the values of their parents. Four years ago, when the twins were nearly one year old, and Jake was a mere twinkle in his dad’s eye, Joey chose, as freely as one-year olds can, to be George Bush for Halloween; Billy followed suit as Dick Cheney. You have to love that stage when your kids seek to please you, but you know in time that as they grow up they will feel the need to differentiate themselves, to declare their independence through some act of defiance. I never thought that day would come before they even turned five.

But it is upon us; equipped with plastic light sabers, and pretending to merely be playing Star Wars in the front yard, the boys destroyed my Bush/Cheney lawn sign, a hate crime if there ever was one. Oh sure, I know what you are thinking, have your kids destroy your lawn sign and then characterize it as indicative of the intolerance of Democrats. Now, I spent enough time in academia myself to spot that as a favorite past time of faculty in the various Departments of Aggrieved Studies, who routinely spray-paint racist epitaphs on the walls of their own buildings to highlight the racism that is rampant on campus. Like the Dan Rather memos, according to the NYT, such actions are “fake, but accurate.” But I assure you that my kids are independent actors – they had been asked not to tamper with the sign, and they summarily ignored that request.

Not enough proof for you? Not long ago, while driving by Republican campaign headquarters in Arlington with them in the car, I saw Joe look at the storefront, put his hand in the shape of a gun, and pull the imaginary trigger; an act stunning in its correspondence to the recent open-minded attacks of a similar ilk by liberal Democrats who fired on GOP campaign HQs in West Virginia and Tennesse, not to mention those who simply ransacked the HQ in Florida. It’s enough to make me rethink gun control.

If I hear these kids sing or even so much as humm one damn Joan Baez or Country Joe and the Fish song, I’ll pay Professor Vic to take them off my hands. After a couple of years of his proselytizing, and their predictable rebellion back to the good side, I’ll take ‘em back. In the meantime, perhaps I’ll be more subtle in indoctrinating the fourth child.